Robbie was like a bear with a sore head yesterday. His laptop died on Saturday evening and he is so upset about it. There was no warning, nothing to suggest anything was wrong, it just turned up it's toes and died mid email. Robbie thinks it could be the mother board, but if you ask me there are two possibilities, boredom or exhaustion. His misery was compounded when he found that the only people who support Philips laptops in UK are PC World. I really mustn't share my opinion of PC World because it isn't printable, let's just say that I am deeply unimpressed. Robbie spent ages ringing round to various branches to find out which store had custody of the single brain cell this week, amazingly it was Coventry (I guess Coventry has to have something going for it). So Robbie will be delivering his laptop for a diagnosis (or possibly a post mortem) this morning. I have been very generous in sharing my computer, but he is absolutely lost without his laptop.
He had his first rant before 6am yesterday morning, and his first 'I'm sorry' text arrived before 7am! When he got home he managed to provoke a furious row by asking me not to cremate the peas! When I met him he hated peas, now suddenly he's an expert. Believe it or not we disagree about 30 seconds cooking time. He says that my extra 30 seconds makes the colour fade. I am adamant that I am not a rabbit and I like my vegetables cooked, I gave up playing marbles when I was about 9 and I don't intend to start now! He kept on about the peas until I got cross and decided that if he wanted to be the next Jamie Oliver he could do it by himself, and I left him to serve the meal alone.
I forgave him later, but I don't suppose it will be long before he is in trouble again. I suppose I had provoked him a bit this evening because I had mentioned a name that always brings the worst out of Robbie - Barry Doe. I love reading the Barry Doe page in Rail magazine, but I should know better than to mention it to Robbie because it always makes him swear. I am not sure if his page is meant to be humorous, but it always makes me smile.
Thursday, 13 March 2008
Two Robbies - Surely Not! 03.02.08
Robbie has found a new cousin, well to be more accurate she found him. We have started to research his family tree and she found him when we put his tree online. If I have calculated correctly she is his third cousin, she lives in USA and is roughly the same age as Robbie. He was delighted to find one cousin but he was very excited when she told him that he has another cousin who is a railway fanatic. Robbie hopes to make contact with this cousin too, so beware, if those two get together you could be bored in stereo!! Robbie was an only child, but he had two female cousins living fairly close by, and he often reminisces about playing with their Sindy doll etc, no wonder he is in touch with his feminine side! I think he has caught the family history bug from me, I have been researching mine for several years, and it is really interesting to find distant cousins along the way.
Parting With Memories 02.02.08
Robbie was late home again on Friday, but not so late that his dinner was in the dog. It wouldn't have matter because the very first thing he told me about was the buffet at the meeting he went to today - I am sure people must think I starve him at home! He said that they were expecting several more people to stay for lunch, but for various reason the other people had to leave early so there was a lot of food. 'Was' being the operative word because it sounds very much as if Robbie did his famous locust impression by eating everything he saw. No wonder he wasn't able to hurry for the previous train!
Now that we have hot water again I have been reorganising the airing cupboard. I have lived in this house for almost 17 years and every couple of years I have had a sort out and tidy up in the airing cupboard. Usually we reach a point where the airing cupboard door refuses to close properly and then I reluctantly sort through and rearrange the piles of bedding and towels until looks a little more orderly again. We had to empty the whole cupboard for the hot water cylinder to be replaced and yet again I marvelled at its tardis like capacity - how did all that stuff fit in there?
Robbie said that I simply had to get rid of all the old or unused items. People who live in glass houses......he is a terrible hoarder. Anyway, I spent much of yesterday sorting though piles of stuff trying to decide what should stay and what should go. There was Emily's Thunderbirds Duvet set - she was a great Thunderbirds fan when she was tiny. I asked her if I should keep it and received a resounding 'YES'. Laura still uses her Noddy set, but we also have her 101 Dalmatian's bedding and there is NO way she will part with that! Sam proved less sentimental, but somehow I couldn't quite bring myself to part with his old covers either, they are a record of his different interests as he grew up. Dennis the Menace, Sharks, Super Heroes and Simpsons. I packed them all neatly into a storage bag to be stowed away at the bag of the highest shelf - just in case.
Sheets were sorted in to double and single piles and I found it a little easier to part with a few sheetsthat were looking a bit shaggy. I even added 2 or 3 double duvet covers to the bin bag, but it is hard to be ruthless. I found the duvet set that I had at college and with considerable reluctance I added to the bin bag, it hadn't been used for 20 years so I don't need it, but it feels like throwing away memories. The towels are even more difficult, they are like old friends. Some were wedding presents (the first time) some where collected along the way at significant events. We still have the towels I made for the children to go over their heads and make it easier to get dry after swimming lessons, they refused to part with them. Then there are the pets towels, am I the only one to demote towels to dog towels when they get a bit worn? Ok, I admit that we have quite a lot of pet towels - but when Robbie baths Megan he always ends wetter than her and the bathroom looks as though there has been a tidal wave.
Now that we have hot water again I have been reorganising the airing cupboard. I have lived in this house for almost 17 years and every couple of years I have had a sort out and tidy up in the airing cupboard. Usually we reach a point where the airing cupboard door refuses to close properly and then I reluctantly sort through and rearrange the piles of bedding and towels until looks a little more orderly again. We had to empty the whole cupboard for the hot water cylinder to be replaced and yet again I marvelled at its tardis like capacity - how did all that stuff fit in there?
Robbie said that I simply had to get rid of all the old or unused items. People who live in glass houses......he is a terrible hoarder. Anyway, I spent much of yesterday sorting though piles of stuff trying to decide what should stay and what should go. There was Emily's Thunderbirds Duvet set - she was a great Thunderbirds fan when she was tiny. I asked her if I should keep it and received a resounding 'YES'. Laura still uses her Noddy set, but we also have her 101 Dalmatian's bedding and there is NO way she will part with that! Sam proved less sentimental, but somehow I couldn't quite bring myself to part with his old covers either, they are a record of his different interests as he grew up. Dennis the Menace, Sharks, Super Heroes and Simpsons. I packed them all neatly into a storage bag to be stowed away at the bag of the highest shelf - just in case.
Sheets were sorted in to double and single piles and I found it a little easier to part with a few sheetsthat were looking a bit shaggy. I even added 2 or 3 double duvet covers to the bin bag, but it is hard to be ruthless. I found the duvet set that I had at college and with considerable reluctance I added to the bin bag, it hadn't been used for 20 years so I don't need it, but it feels like throwing away memories. The towels are even more difficult, they are like old friends. Some were wedding presents (the first time) some where collected along the way at significant events. We still have the towels I made for the children to go over their heads and make it easier to get dry after swimming lessons, they refused to part with them. Then there are the pets towels, am I the only one to demote towels to dog towels when they get a bit worn? Ok, I admit that we have quite a lot of pet towels - but when Robbie baths Megan he always ends wetter than her and the bathroom looks as though there has been a tidal wave.
Network Rail - The Big Question 02.02.08
It seems that Network Rail is one of three unlikely companies that have been granted permission to award their own qualifications that will have equivalent status to A Levels and diplomas. When I heard this announced on the news a question sprang to my mind. Will Network Rail be restricted to weekday training, and if not will their trainees find their rail qualification replaced with a bus qualification?!
I am not sure how much meaning a Mc Donald's A Level will have, but I can see that a Network Rail qualification would be a great asset to anyone considering a career in politics. After all, experience in blame shifting, diversion, diversion and pointless delay would seem to be a great advantage!
The real story
I am not sure how much meaning a Mc Donald's A Level will have, but I can see that a Network Rail qualification would be a great asset to anyone considering a career in politics. After all, experience in blame shifting, diversion, diversion and pointless delay would seem to be a great advantage!
The real story
Happy Birthday Emily 31.01.08
It was Emily's birthday today and for the first time ever we have not been able to see her on her birthday. She will be back from university tomorrow, so she will just extend her birthday a bit. She wanted money rather than a present but we also bought her some speakers for watching films on her laptop. I added a silly little present to make her laugh, a talking Clanger - she loves the clangers and the noise they make always makes her laugh. Two of her flatmates are not English and she found it very difficult to explain to them what the Clangers were!
The plumber came to replace the hot water cylinder today. I hate having jobs like that done because it causes so much chaos. Nothing in our household seems to be simple or uneventful and this was no exception. We had a flood in the kitchen and the new cylinder leaked quite badly so the man had to come back, but finally we have hot water again - bliss!!
It was so windy that our recycling boxes (and contents) mad a bid for freedom and had to be weighted down, and the fence down the right hand side of the back garden decided it would prefer to swap sides and it now looks more like decking than fencing. I am fed up with that fence, I think we would be better off with a wall but I expect that will be expensive.
The Highlight of the Day! 30.01.08
Robbie was late home and extremely talkative after his expedition to Cambridge. He met lots of people he doesn't see very often but the first thing he told me about was the re-branding of the sandwiches on West Coast!. I asked if that was the highlight of his day and he said that it was. I nudged the conversation on to what I hoped would be a more interesting direction but that led him to tell me all about the queue for the toilets at Stanstead. He should count himself lucky, if he was a woman he would be used to queuing for the toilet! Oh, and the other highlight of his day - the buffet of course!
Windows 30.01.08
Robbie managed to have a reasonably uneventful day yesterday, no delayed trains or railway chaos, but he only went to Birmingham yesterday so there was less potential for disaster. It seems that every time Robbie travels north of Derby he puts a jinx on the entire railway network. He is going to Cambridge today (via London). It is one of those occasions when rail travel really doesn't make sense. It is 57 miles from Northampton to Cambridge by road with an estimated journey time of 1hr 20 mins, but on the railway the journey can take over three hours depending on the time that you travel. There is a bus that goes from Northampton to Cambridge and I suggested that Robbie should go by bus. He was horrified and he insisted that he is a railway man so it would be disloyal to travel by coach. He was really excited about his journey - because his train to London will have pull down windows!!
Dave wearing a red and white sock.
I haven't written much about Dave the cat recently. His foot is still not healing and the vet intends to freeze it to remove the bad flesh and hopefully give it a better chance to heal. His foot doesn't seem to bother him, in fact he gets into so much mischief that I dread to think what he will be like when his foot is better. He has obviously been used to fending for himself and despite being very well fed and comfortable now he is still a scavenger. He has an amazing sense of smell and if I leave food out in the kitchen he is there in seconds trying to steal it. The other day he stole a jam doughnut and when I spotted him he growled furiously and ate every bit of it, he got strawberry jam on the hall carpet! His favourite trick is to get into the kitchen bin, the other day I heard a rustling and when I went into the kitchen there was just a ginger tail sticking out of the bin. Robbie does get cross about the Dave ransacking the bin, but he and Dave get on very well because they share a passion for food. Dave's little understudy Oreo is fine, Dave teaches him all sorts of bad habits but he is still really cute.
Oreo doing a spot of French Revision.
Final Warning! 29.01.08
Robbie finally got back to the house at about 12.35am this morning, and after all that travelling he was starving, so he had to eat before going to bed. I had given up on staying awake soon after Robbie got home, so I was sound asleep when he came to bed. He had already been warned that I had heard more than enough about Network Rail for one day, so I had every reason to hope that he wouldn't wake me up to share his latest railway ramblings. He did wake me up and he did talk to me, but for once it was not about trains. Believe it or not at just after 2am he woke me up to talk about Steven Fry and bipolar disorder. He is on a final warning, if he feels the need to be that random again he will find himself sleeping on the sofa and he can discuss 'the meaning of life' or the failings of Network Rail with the dog - she doesn't seem to mind as much as I do!
Pillow Talk. 28.01.08
I think I mentioned in a previous entry that Robbie left home at around 5.30am. He was going to Leeds and he had a horrible journey due to slow moving freight delaying his train and causing him to miss his connection, it delayed his journey by an hour. Being Robbie he used the time wisely and found a nice little cafe! He has had an even worse journey home, he has been travelling for most of the evening and he doesn't expect to arrive back in Northampton until after midnight, so we will have a very late night -again! It is bad enough him getting home late, but if he starts talking about Network Rail in bed again, I will be very tempted to harm him!!
Since Robbie isn't around to provide us with a random fact, here is one I came across earlier today. In the late nineteenth century Northamptonshire had 75 railway stations, today it has just 5! I wish I was a time traveller!
Since Robbie isn't around to provide us with a random fact, here is one I came across earlier today. In the late nineteenth century Northamptonshire had 75 railway stations, today it has just 5! I wish I was a time traveller!
The Bottom Line 28.01.08
BE LOUD!
Today it is my turn for a 'did you know' and hopefully this one is a little more relevant than some of Robbie's random comments. Did you know that this is BE LOUD week? Perhaps not, but it is really important so I have decided to write about it. BE LOUD is an awareness and fundraising campaign by Beating Bowel Cancer. By BEING LOUD about bowel cancer and its symptoms, dispelling the embarrassment so often associated with the disease, we can help to save lives from the second most deadly cancer in the UK.
So, why is this so important to me? It is important because bowel cancer caught early is very treatable, it doesn't have to be a killer and it doesn't have to devastate lives. My husband Eric woke one night with an acute pain in his side, at first he was told that he had a pulled muscle, then they thought it was hepatitis, but the dreadful truth was that he had bowel cancer and it had already spread to his liver. He was a fighter and if willpower and determination could have saved him he would be here now, but it couldn't and he isn't here now. It took just three months from the first sign of illness for the cancer to devastate his body and leave him unrecognisable. His final act of willpower was to survive for one more day so that he didn't die on my birthday. He was 38. We now know that his bowel cancer probably has a genetic link and our children will need to be monitored from their mid twenties onwards.
Today it is my turn for a 'did you know' and hopefully this one is a little more relevant than some of Robbie's random comments. Did you know that this is BE LOUD week? Perhaps not, but it is really important so I have decided to write about it. BE LOUD is an awareness and fundraising campaign by Beating Bowel Cancer. By BEING LOUD about bowel cancer and its symptoms, dispelling the embarrassment so often associated with the disease, we can help to save lives from the second most deadly cancer in the UK.
So, why is this so important to me? It is important because bowel cancer caught early is very treatable, it doesn't have to be a killer and it doesn't have to devastate lives. My husband Eric woke one night with an acute pain in his side, at first he was told that he had a pulled muscle, then they thought it was hepatitis, but the dreadful truth was that he had bowel cancer and it had already spread to his liver. He was a fighter and if willpower and determination could have saved him he would be here now, but it couldn't and he isn't here now. It took just three months from the first sign of illness for the cancer to devastate his body and leave him unrecognisable. His final act of willpower was to survive for one more day so that he didn't die on my birthday. He was 38. We now know that his bowel cancer probably has a genetic link and our children will need to be monitored from their mid twenties onwards.
The symptoms of bowel cancer can be very slight, almost unnoticeable and they can easily be ignored because they could easily have very minor causes. The message is BE LOUD, befriend your bowel, be brave, it is good to talk about bottoms - it could save a life!
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